A stalled U.S. push to ad­vance new nuc­le­ar sanc­tions against Ir­an has law­makers mulling how to hit it with ter­ror­ism-re­lated pen­al­ties in­stead, al-Mon­it­or re­ports.

A pro­pos­al to fur­ther ex­act a cost on Ir­an for sup­port­ing Hezbol­lah has been un­der con­sid­er­a­tion at the House For­eign Af­fairs Com­mit­tee for months, the pub­lic­a­tion said in a Thursday art­icle. However, the ini­ti­at­ive re­portedly gained new mo­mentum after Demo­crat­ic law­makers stopped push­ing to ad­vance sep­ar­ate le­gis­la­tion that would threaten new nuc­le­ar sanc­tions against the Middle East­ern na­tion.

The United States and five oth­er coun­tries agreed not to im­pose fresh atom­ic pen­al­ties against Ir­an for the dur­a­tion of a six-month atom­ic deal that took ef­fect in Janu­ary. Any new nuc­le­ar sanc­tions, ac­cord­ing to Tehran, would prompt it to with­draw from an on­go­ing dia­logue over con­cerns about its nuc­le­ar pro­gram.

Ir­an ex­ten­ded that warn­ing to cov­er any sanc­tions that would be triggered if Tehran does not agree to spe­cif­ic terms in a po­ten­tial fi­nal nuc­le­ar ac­cord. The Per­sian Gulf power in­sists its atom­ic am­bi­tions are purely peace­ful, but has voiced open­ness to po­ten­tially ac­cept­ing long-term re­stric­tions on the ef­forts in re­turn for sanc­tions re­lief from the five per­man­ent U.N. Se­cur­ity Coun­cil mem­ber na­tions and Ger­many.

Ac­cord­ing to one House staffer, Obama of­fi­cials “can’t say to Con­gress that we’re go­ing to blow up the nuc­le­ar ne­go­ti­ations by passing fur­ther au­thor­iz­a­tions for Hezbol­lah sanc­tions.”

Former U.S. Treas­ury De­part­ment Mat­thew Levitt, though, sug­ges­ted that a num­ber of Obama in­siders “would prob­ably not want to see it right now if it has any­thing to do with Ir­an at all.”

The House has completed it's business for 2016 by passing a spending bill which will keep the government funded through April 28. The final vote tally was 326-96. The bill's standing in the Senate is a bit tenuous at the moment, as a trio of Democratic Senators have pledged to block the bill unless coal miners get a permanent extension on retirement and health benefits. The government runs out of money on Friday night.

HEADS TO OBAMA

Senate Approves Defense Bill

19 hours ago

THE LATEST

The Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act today, sending the $618 billion measure to President Obama. The president vetoed the defense authorization bill a year ago, but both houses could override his disapproval this time around.

Source:

ANTI-MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE

Trump Chooses Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr CEO as Labor Sec

21 hours ago

BREAKING

BUCKING THE BOSS?

Trump Cabinet Full of TPP Supporters

21 hours ago

WHY WE CARE

"President-elect Donald Trump railed against the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his way to winning the White House and has vowed immediately to withdraw the U.S. from the 12-nation accord. Several of his cabinet picks and other early nominees to top posts, however, have endorsed or spoken favorably about the trade pact, including Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, announced Wednesday as Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to China, and retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, Mr. Trump’s pick to head the Department of Defense."